The Place of Law in the Liberal Arts College

University of Chicago Law School Chicago Unbound Journal Articles Faculty Scholarship 1953 The Place of Law in the Liberal Arts College Brainerd Currie Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/journal_articles Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Brainerd Currie, "The Place of Law in the Liberal Arts College," 5 Journal of Legal Education 428 (1953). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PLACE OF LAW IN THE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE * BRAINERD CURRIEt A LAW school man is perhaps not in the ideal position to discuss the place of law in the liberal arts college. Yet discussions of this question have so often been characterized by extremism and lack of frankness that a small degree of moderation and candor, from whatever quarter, may have some utility. The most extreme views on this subject seldom find expression in formal discussions, thanks to our polite conventions. They exist, never- theless, to shape the attitudes which are taken when concrete arrangements come to be made. There is, first of all, the disdainful attitude of some collegians, who regard the law as mean vocational stuff devoid of respectable intellectual aspects. This cloistered attitude is happily dying out, but there are those who cling to it. These are the men who smile when they quote epigrams such as that the study of law sharpens the mind by narrowing it; but often their jesting is in earnest. Such men would do well to look around them, for a little observation would teach that in this age of so- ciological jurisprudence the study of law as a mechanism for dealing with a wide range of human problems, with its insistence on rigorous and objective thinking and its appeal for enlightenment from every relevant source, can be-and sometimes is-a liberalizing experience. We are here speaking, however, of the total effect of a professional education in law, and it does not necessarily follow that bits and pieces of a law curriculum should be imported into the liberal arts college. There is, secondly, the haughty, proprietary attitude of some law school men, who regard any attention by the college to conventionally legal subjects as a presumptuous infringement by self-appointed incom- petents. Such men would do well to recall that the concerns of lawyers are to a large extent precisely the concerns of historians, economists, polit- ical scientists, sociologists, and philosophers, and that under one name or another these matters were the subject of university study long before the professional school of law was conceived. They might also recall with profit that the study of Anglo-American law as such won its way * A paper delivered at the University of Chicago Law School Conference on The Profession of Law and Legal Education, December 4, 1952. 4 Dean, University of Pittsburgh Law School. 428 1953] PLACE OF LAW IN THE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE 429 into university purlieus in the first place at least partly on the basis of its claim to be recognized as an appropriate component of the course of liberal studies. Blackstone's inaugural lecture as Vinerian Professor of Law at Oxford is familiar, but some of us tend to forget that the greater part of it was devoted to an elaboration of the "undeniable position" that a competent knowledge of English law was "the proper ac- complishment of every gentleman and scholar; an highly useful, I had almost said essential, part of liberal and polite education." The same theme was repeated by some of the early American professors of law: James Wilson at Pennsylvania announced that the plan of his course was to furnish a "rational and useful entertainment to gentlemen of all professions," and Chancellor Kent at Columbia deemed his lectures "useful and ornamental to gentlemen in every pursuit." 1 The third conspicuously extreme position is much more prevalent, and much more important because it finds its way quite generally into the actual arrangements of the liberal arts curriculum. This is the attitude of the academician who is well aware of the extent to which his sphere of interest and responsibility coincides with that of the law school; who needs no convincing of the cultural values of law study; who is deeply impressed with the efficacy of methods of study which have been developed in the law school; and who leaves no stone unturned in his determination to shape his courses so that in method, materials, content, purpose, and result they will be indistinguishable from those given in the professional school. I shall have more to say of this attitude, because it causes me the greatest concern; just -now I shall say only that those who adhere to it would do well to reflect that in Blackstone's panegyric on law as a liberal and humane study there was undeniable hyperbole and more than a little disingenuousness. It is reasonably clear that what Blackstone and Wilson and Kent were mainly interested in was the establishment in the universities of professional law study, and all were conscious of the need to appease what Blackstone called the "monastic prejudice" of hostile academicians. The lack of frankness which has plagued formal discussions of this question is congenital, and it will not do to take such dissertationson the value of law study for tle average man too literally. That there is a place for law in the liberal arts college I have no doubt. That college courses, especially in the social sciences, must inevitably cover much of the same ground that is occupied by the law schools seems merely obvious. That law in some of its aspects, and certainly legal in- stitutions, can and should be an important part of the program of studies of the college which aims simply to produce educated men, must at the ICurrie, The Materials of Law Study, 3 .LEGAL EDUC. 331, 347, 356 n. 67 (1951). 5 Journal of Legal Ed.No. 4-2 JOURNAL OF LEGAL EDUCATION [VOL. 5 present time be primarily a declaration of faith; but it is a faith to which I adhere. It seems to me that, not from lack of interest but from over-zealousness, the colleges have in general failed to realize their op- portunities-and, indeed, to meet their responsibilities-in this matter. We are confronted with a paradox: whereas once the college faculties regarded with aversion anything that smacked of the lawyer's practical art, the difficulty now is that some members of those faculties, in their enthusiasm for the educative potential of legal studies (or perhaps simply in their enthusiasm) have injected a professionalism into their courses which poorly serves the objectives of general education, which tends to the neglect of their own distinctive contribution, and which fails, finally, to warrant its last desperate justification-that it provides de- sirable preparation for law school. The rightful place of law in the college curriculum will not be established by efforts in that direction. Before we proceed, there are one or two formal matters that require attention. It would be possible to consider college courses having legal content both from the standpoint of their general cultural value and as preliminary training for the student who intends a legal career. I take it, however, that the spirit .of my assignment calls clearly for a consid- eration of the appropriateness of legal studies to a plan of liberal education for all college students, irrespective of ultimate vocational aims. I therefore propose to dismiss the pre-law aspects of the matter with two rather summary remarks: First, if a course does not'serve the ends of liberal education the college is not justified in retaining it simply because it is good preparation for law school; and second, the best preparation for law school is furnished by courses which concentrate on the goal of imparting a liberal education, and do not attempt to anticipate the professional curriculum. It may be well, also, to narrow the field of discussion. Among the courses of more or less legal character commonly offered by undergraduate schools it is possible to distinguish at least five different cate- gories. First there is International Law, which we can at once exclude from the present discussion on the ground that it has never become firmly established as a professional law course in the sense that Constitutional Law, for example, has. This particular transition is incomplete. The current literature of legal education echoes frequently the pleas of devoted law teachers for the inclusion of International Law in the law school curriculum. Without taking sides on that issue, we can simply observe that International Law is not sufficiently established as a component of the professional curriculum to constitute part of the problem under discussion. 19531 PLACE OF LAW IN THE LmBERAL ARTS CoLLmEG 431 Next there are the business law courses, beginning with the conven- tional concoction of commercial law topics, ramifying with increasing complexity into business organizations, corporate finance, labor law, and government regulation of business, and passing at some not very determinate stage into the graduate level. An undergraduate school of business administration raises questions altogether different from those raised by the liberal arts college in this connection, and on that ground this group of courses can also be put aside. A rather remarkable cir- cumstance enforces a brief comment, however. Columbia College rec- ommends its elementary course in business law (designed primarily for students intending to enter the graduate school of business) for both pre-law and liberal arts students.

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